Canada’s action on climate change might once have been said to be moving at glacial speed. Indeed, the progress is slow, but there are fewer glaciers by which to measure that speed, as they are disappearing alarmingly fast.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged from a meeting with provincial premiers Friday claiming victory in his quest for a national “framework” agreement on climate change. A major component of that agreement is carbon pricing, which Trudeau sought to start at $10 a tonne in 2018 and raise to $50 a tonne by 2022.
As Trudeau went into the meeting, he encountered opposition from premiers Brad Wall of Saskatchewan, Brian Pallister of Manitoba and Christy Clark of B.C.
Wall has long been adamantly opposed to carbon pricing, and says he wants more research on the effect a carbon tax could have on Saskatchewan.
Pallister is not opposed to the carbon tax — he said he supports everything in the agreement — but he first wants a better health-care accord, which he said is just as important as the climate-change issue.
Clark, too, is not opposed to carbon pricing. In fact, B.C. has been a leader in the field. While other jurisdictions have made vague promises about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, B.C. walked the talk, implementing a carbon tax in 2008.
The Gordon Campbell government promised the tax would be revenue-neutral, and that promise has been kept — the tax has been more than offset by cuts in other taxes. And fossil-fuel use in B.C. declined by 14 per cent between 2008 and 2014, even as it rose three per cent in the rest of Canada.
B.C. proved that environmental measures can be good for the economy, earning praise from such entities as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank and The Economist magazine.
Despite that success, the B.C. carbon tax was frozen at $30 a tonne in 2012, and Clark has rejected recommendations from her own climate-leadership team to increase the tax by $10 a tonne per year beginning in 2018.
Worried that other jurisdictions will not be carrying their fair share, Clark elicited assurances from Trudeau that Ontario and Quebec’s cap-and-trade carbon market would impose an equivalent carbon price.
Under the compromise deal, the carbon price would pause at B.C.’s current $30 level in 2020, when an independent expert panel will look at how the plan is evolving.
Clark has said she needs to balance the environmental measures with her obligation to protect the economy.
Trudeau, too, walks that line. His measures to mitigate climate change contrast with his government’s approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG project, the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion and Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline to the U.S.
The fossil-fuel industry is hugely important to the Canadian economy, and measures to reduce that reliance will cause pain, especially in the short term.
But while Canada is inching ahead on climate-change measures, glaciers are rapidly shrinking. Arctic sea ice is at a record low and Antarctic sea ice, which had been increasing, is also decreasing this year.
Oceans are becoming increasingly acidic as they absorb the carbon dioxide produced by human activity, and marine ecosystems are suffering from warming water. These and other developments are occurring more rapidly than anticipated.
U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, visiting Ottawa last week, said the world is heading inexorably in the direction of reducing greenhouse gases. “There’s no way to turn back the tide that has begun to roll,” he said.
The question is: Will that tide roll quickly enough to save our polar ice, glaciers, oceans and vital ecosystems?
